Passing It On
by meldahlie
Summary: When did Caspian first see Cair Paravel? One-shot; missing moment from PC.


Passing it on

When did Caspian first see Cair Paravel? One-shot; missing moment from _Prince Caspian_.

~:~:~~

When he had been little, it had been what Caspian had used to play: being a knight from the Golden Age, spending his days rubbing shoulders with the four Kings and Queens. That made it all the stranger to suddenly spend your day with High King Peter on one side of you, and King Edmund the Just on the other; the one barely older than you, the other slightly younger. To meet Aslan and have been knighted was solemn; to have won the battle and the war was astonishing and a relief all together; this was just plain strange.

If the two other kings noticed, they did not show it. He was, somehow, a friend in their eyes. And, if he pushed aside the strangeness, it was entirely possible to be friends back – at least with King Edmund. The High King was just a little more daunting. He might be only Caspian's age or barely older, however that strange time-shift worked from their world to this – but King Peter _knew_ so much more! The business of the day after the battle went on – the announcements to be sent out, the prisoners to be attended to, the whole business of re-establishing Narnia – and they all worked as equals, with Queen Susan and Queen Lucy, the four monarchs cheerily addressing each other as Pete and Ed and Su and Lu – and then suddenly Peter would say something or do something, and Caspian would remember again that this was High King Peter of the Golden Age – and all was strange again.

It was late afternoon. King Peter made some sort of comment about the ways to deal with Giants, and the gulf of strangeness came rushing back yet again. Caspian flung up his hands. "I'll never remember all this!"

"You will," said King Edmund, patting him cheerily on the shoulder. "What you need to remember, by the Lion's Grace, you'll remember. He'll show you. He showed Peter and I. Pete?"

Caspian followed Edmund's glance, but the High King didn't reply. He stood there, staring into the sky with a frown.

"Peter?" Edmund repeated. "Oi!"

Caspian swallowed a gulp of surprise, but this most unorthodox address seemed to bring King Peter out of his sudden reverie, if not quite back to the thread of the conversation. "Hang on," he said. "I'm going to have a word with Aslan."

Without further ado, he vanished towards the thin cluster of Trees surrounding Aslan on the far side of the field. Caspian looked uncertainly at King Edmund, who shrugged and grinned. "I don't know. He's the High King; he gets Ideas sometimes. Like our first winter. He was King Peter the Mysterious for almost a week before he let the girls and I in on the idea for the Snow Dance."

"He invented the Snow Dance?!"

"You still have it?!"

Their joint laughter over speaking at the same time was still going as King Peter came striding back. "Aslan says 'Yes'!" he called. "But just Caspian and I to go – sorry, Ed."

"Where?" King Edmund demanded. Caspian looked at him with relief. That had been his question; he just hadn't been able to think of a way to put it to a High King.

Peter waved a hand northwest-ward. "Back to the How. If we go now, we should be back in time for supper."

~:~:~

If it had been strange, working with the four Monarchs, it was even stranger to be riding, just himself and the High King, back up the winding road they had pursued Miraz' army down yesterday. They rode in silence, Caspian uncertain what to say and still not quite sure what they were going for. _"Aslan says 'yes'"_ was all King Peter had said. So-?

So Aslan had said 'yes.' Caspian steadied his uncertainties with a firm thought, as he would have used a firm hand for his horse. And it was good to be back on Destrier. King Edmund had gone off to fetch the horses for them, and come back grinning and shouting with the news that the King's horse had been found, tethered in the main Telmarine picket lines. Caspian feared he had been rather rude, completely forgetting both the other kings while he rushed to greet Destrier.

If they minded, they hadn't shown it when he finally looked up from Destrier's seemingly equally glad whinnies and nuzzles. King Edmund had just grinned, and given King Peter a quick boost up onto the bay which had been brought for him – one of Sopespian's, Caspian noted.

"If you're ready," the High King had said, smiling down at Caspian, and Caspian had scrambled to mount and remember to smile back. The problem was, that had been the last thing which had been said. And they had been riding over a mile already.

Caspian smothered a sigh, looked about at his side of the road, and then leaned forwards slightly to pat Destrier again in cover for the restless uncertainty in his hands. The movement seemed to catch King Peter's eye, for he looked across.

"You forget the joy of a horse. When you have to live without one."

The joy of a horse – you did! Even after only a couple of months, Caspian realised. The way Destrier shifted under him, the warmth against his legs, the rise and fall of their steady trot, the gentle communicative pressure down the reins – without realising it, he had missed all those while in hiding. Caspian felt a sudden surge of empathy for the rider beside him. A thousand years or whatever – with no horse! He chanced a grin across the space between them. King Peter grinned back. The two horses seemed to detect something and drew a little closer; or perhaps it was just that the woods narrowed in on the road here.

King Peter rose in his stirrups and peered into the undergrowth. "There used to be a well, there. And a bad-tempered old dwarf who looked after it. He had brothers who'd been in the White Witch's pay. We used to have trouble with him: who he'd let use the well and such like."

"I expect I'm going to have more trouble than using wells," Caspian reflected.

"Some," King Peter agreed. "But with Aslan offering this new home for those who don't like you as king, the worst of it should be gone. And you'll have all sorts of nice things, too. You'll probably get all sorts of people coming back," he added encouragingly. "We did. Talking Horses, the Eagles, several more lions. Never the elephants, though. Lu used to mind that."

"No elephants!" Caspian said it before he realised just how startled he was. He had always thought of the Golden Age as having everything – all the creatures from all the stories – right back to the dawn of time – everything right and restored and made new.

"No elephants. They'd gone to the southern plains beyond Calormen to get away from the Witch. Though we sent envoys, and at first they sent messages back, they never came. Lucy wanted to go and find them herself, but we – went back, before she could." Peter sighed, as if this was still a slight trouble to him. Another silence settled, apart from the steady pounding of the horses' feet, but it wasn't such a strained and awkward silence this time.

Caspian pondered. The Old Narnians had fled from the Telmarines just as they had from the White Witch, hidden away as Trumpkin and Trufflehunter had been. They would come back for Aslan's proclamation – but what about all those Telmarines who had fled from his uncle? The aristocracy who had backed his father had mostly been killed, he knew that from Doctor Cornelius – but what about the ordinary Telmarines? Plenty of those in Narnia had already come, in this one day since the battle, to pledge their allegiance and say they would be staying-

"I shall have to send an envoy out," Caspian said slowly. "To Archenland, and all the islands. Anywhere there might be Narnians who need to come home."

He had only been thinking out loud, but it seemed to act as a cheer to King Peter, whose pensive expression broke into a smile again. "Shiploads of them, coming back! That would be good!"

Yes, envoys and ships of returning Narnians would be good. Caspian tucked the idea away, a sort of warm and hopeful thought – that slowly sprouted an even warmer thought. The friends and supporters of his father had all been slain. Thus Doctor Cornelius had said. Except for the seven lords who had not feared the sea, and had been sent to the eastern end of the world. Seven loyal men who had known his father – might – be out there, somewhere. No simple envoy or proclamation would reach them, but maybe...

"Here we are!"

Caspian jerked back to the present as King Peter spoke and Destrier halted abruptly. Here they were, indeed – the How rising steeply above them. Caspian hastily gathered up his thoughts along with his reins. He would ask Aslan, later, about his father's friends. For now – he swung down and looked questioningly at the High King. "Inside, or where?"

"Up," said King Peter, getting down.

They climbed, laughing. Caspian wasn't sure why the horses had to come too, but though it was, in reality, almost as easy to laugh with King Peter as it had been with King Edmund, that wasn't the same as asking questions. There was no time for asking questions, anyway. The How was steep. Caspian and King Peter had both stopped laughing and were simply puffing by the time they stepped over the edge onto the flat top. Destrier and the bay let out matching _'whooshes'_ of breath behind them.

"We didn't come up here very much," said Caspian, looking round at the great flat oval of grass. "Too great a risk of getting shot at."

He'd only been up here the once, in fact. The night he had slipped away and sat out under the stars with all his feelings of despair and inadequacy as a king and a commander. The night Reepicheep, dear loyal Reepicheep, had followed him and ventured politely that his, Reep's, father, had always said it helped to tell your troubles over to someone. That sense of comfort from Reepicheep's wise and Lion-trusting answers to Caspian's own doubts seemed to be still here, as if it had waited for him. A sort of detached perspective on yesterday's sudden aid, and the duel, and the battle.

 _See,_ it said. _Here you are. By the grace of the Lion, King of Narnia._

"I've never been up here at all," said King Peter, stepping forwards across the grass. "I scrambled partway up, yesterday, when we were looking over the troops while Ed was taking the message."

Caspian looked back over the edge, to the woods where yesterday – only yesterday! – had been the tents and the army of Miraz. Gone, like a dream in the night, while the How still stood, ancient and massive – but not ageless.

"..it was only a bare green hill, with the Stone Table on it," King Peter was saying. "But if the Table was about there..." He looked around, as if seeing something Caspian could not, while trying to get his bearings in this new landscape at the same time. "Yes. Table there, tents there, edge of hill – oh, silly me!"

Caspian blinked. People did not laugh at themselves like that in the Telmarine court. But the High King didn't seem to think this was a bad or unkingly thing to do. He simply laughed, and then pointed. "There's the sea! Big enough that you'd think I wouldn't miss it!"

The sea! Caspian looked from his companion to where he pointed. The eastern horizon was blue: a blue quite unlike the haze of distant land; a blue that stirred some sudden throb in his heart and made his breath catch in his throat. For the first time – the sea!

"Come on!" King Peter said brightly, tugging his bay up to the mounting position. "That's the East. The trees have all grown, but with the height of the How and the horses, we should be able to see it!"

"See-" Caspian stopped, one foot in Destrier's stirrup. He had been going to say 'what?' – but King Peter had halted. One foot in the bay's stirrup, one hand holding the reins – and the other hand with its bandaged wrist resting in vain on the saddle pommel.

That was why King Edmund had whispered to his brother as he'd brought the bay over! That was why he'd given him the boost up – they hadn't been waiting or impatient for Caspian at all! Caspian almost flung the reins over Destrier's neck and dropped down on one knee beside the High King. The wound was his debt – and there was some small thing he could do to repay it. "Leg up?"

"Thank you," said Peter simply, as Caspian mounted Destrier a moment later. "Some things are ridiculously incapacitating." He looked down at his wrist. "It seemed too minor to ask Lucy to apply the cordial."

Caspian shrugged. "So what are we looking for?" he asked, suddenly easily.

Peter shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon. "The Cair. As I first saw it. Aslan showed me from up here, you see." He smiled, a remembering yet solemn sort of smile, still looking eastwards. "That was what I realised, earlier. Aslan showed Ed and I what we needed to know, just like he will you. And that included showing me Cair Paravel, the first day we met Him – right from up here."

Caspian's breath caught. He had lived for almost a month in the How, walked past the old, old paintings and carvings in the winding tunnels, held council in the chamber of the Table. And the paintings and the carvings and the huge How itself spoke of just how ancient and solemn and holy the Table was, as the Table itself did, in its massive stone-iness. But all which had happened there hadn't seemed – Real. Not standing beside you, speak-of-it-normally, happened-on-an-ordinary-day, Real.

Here, Aslan the Great Lion, had really died. Here, the dawn had really broken upon Queen Susan and Queen Lucy. Here, by the Deeper Magic From Before the Dawn of Time, Aslan had really risen again. Here, the High King had really been shown the castle of all true monarchs of Narnia. A castle he, Caspian, was really to see-

"There it is!"

Peter exclaimed in sudden triumph. Caspian jerked back from his thoughts, looked, and felt a stab of disappointment. He could see nothing on the horizon. The sea was still there in its heart-throbbing blue; the green treetops of the whole eastern half of Narnia spread unbroken to it, but there was no castle. No castle at all, certainly not the many-towered splendour he had always imagined from the tales.

"Where?" Caspian asked, trying not to sound as childishly let-down as he felt.

Peter edged his horse over until their knees bumped together. "Follow my arm."

Caspian leaned and squinted along the indicated line. The sea, straight as an arrow at the top and scalloped with the woods at the bottom. Sea and trees, sea and trees, but somewhere along there … Caspian squinted more closely. The line of the woods ran south, gently curving and then suddenly it dipped, as if someone had taken a nick out of it with a sword. And there, at the foot of the nick, was a small golden-stone coloured speck. "Cair Paravel?"

Peter's arm shook in time to his nodding. "At the mouth of the Great River. Two days march. You can be home at tea-time on the second day down from Beruna, if you go smartly."

Home... The word was casually spoken, but there was a hint of longing beneath it. Home. Cair Paravel. Caspian stared at that small, golden speck. It was crazy; impossible; he had never been there; but the two things seemed to fit, to belong together in his mind. There, not at Beaversdam where his father had been murdered and from where all Narnia had been oppressed, would be home. No – was home. For he was King of Narnia now, and their home is Cair Paravel, just as it had been for Peter even when he stood beside Aslan on this hill for the first time.

"Look after it," said Peter in a slightly strained voice. "Won't you?"

Caspian looked round at him. "Cair Paravel?"

Peter moved his arm to gesture at the whole expanse before them. "Narnia," he said simply.

Caspian looked out and looked back – and met Peter's gaze. Two kings of Narnia looked at each other, and said nothing in words. But there was no gulf dividing them. Only their country binding them together.

It is a strange joy to suddenly find you have, after all, a brother. A joy as wordless as that of looking into Aslan's eyes; a joy as strong as that of victory; a joy as physical as that of being at one with your horse. Caspian held out his hand, and Peter clasped it.

"I will," said Caspian. "By the grace of the Lion, I and my house, until Aslan sends you again."

King and High King looked back out across Narnia spread before them, and then Peter bowed his head. "Amen."

~:~:~

 _A/N: In case it is not obvious by now, I ONLY do book-verse!_


End file.
